NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Whether you call it the Muslim Ban or the Travel Ban, I cannot help but think of Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer whenever the issue of Trump's poorly conceived executive order blocking immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations. It is intriguing the way that Trump's candidacy and now his presidency has ended up revealing so much of the guts of the political game in the United States, that it threatens to rend the whole thing asunder. What I mean by this is that politics is a game that is designed to keep anyone from fundamentally changing or challenging anything. A narrow range of ideological options are offered, neither of which would change much about the structure of society or the distribution of power. As long as everyone plays their roles, you could argue that revolution in both positive or negative sense is avoided. But Trump's refusal to be a typical politician or leader or even just a serious, mature person is leading to a crisis where the guts, the bones, t

Third parties or alternative political parties are such strange creatures in the United States. I have identified as a Democrat for much of my life, although a very progressive Democrat in almost every way, to the point where often times somebody such as Ralph Nader or Jill Stein seems to speak for me more clearer than a Barack Obama or a Hillary Clinton. Part of my weirdness for them is simply the fact that I live in a colony of the United States, and my affinity for one party over the other is pretty irrelevant. Although we can participate in the primary process for Democrats and Republicans, we are barred, like other territories from participating in the general election. So, while I may want a certain candidate to win, may feel " este i gayu-hu hunggan, ha gof kuentusiyi yu'" a lot of it is made pointless by the colonial difference, the political gap between Guam and its colonizer. But each time there is an election in the United States for President, I always fee

A close friend of mine who just started his Ph.D. program has been having trouble with balancing his personal life and academic life, and keeping up with the theoretical workload involved. I sent him some advice, just from my perspective about how to survive in an environment where you are reading so much each week and then expected to speak intelligently on the sheer amount of data and ideas you are expected to absorb. This naturally made me remember my own grad school days, in particular my days of reading multiple theoretical texts a week in my UCSD Ethnic Studies program. I had my own tricks in order to survive, but I was helped by the fact that I read pretty fast and also just loved reading. Not having kids at that time and living away from much of my extended family also helped. The reflection or analytical papers that I wrote in grad school are favorite mementos of mine. They represent a time when my brain was afire with ideas and I was writing and reading constantly. It is

“The Fourth Kind” Michael Lujan Bevacqua 10/26/2011 The Marianas Variety For those who follow the local decolonization conversation, you know that there are three options for Guam in terms of its future political status; statehood, free association and independence. These options are part of an internationally recognized United Nations’ process for taking territories or colonies and getting them to become self-determined entities. You could call these the Holy Trinity of status options. These three options were not created arbitrarily, and are not perfect, but are meant to reflect the most basic ways in which a colonized people can reassess their relationship to their colonizer and get rid of the colonial elements of it. At this level, decolonization is about ridding your relationship to the colonizer of its unilateral and unequal aspects; you can do so by splitting them off entirely, by integrating into them, or by creating a new agreement through which your relationship is ma

Most people think that a successful social movement or coalition is dependent upon people thinking the same things, coming from the same places, or being on the same page. Its easy to believe this sort of thing, since if let's say we're all Chamorro in a group, or we're all students, or we're all people who play World of Warcraft, we'd all understand each other better and get along better. Commonsensically, este i minagahet. Yanggen mamparehu i taotao siha, siempre manakonfotme siha. But, when we are talking about a social movement, a public collection of people who are working towards tearing something down, building something and changing a society, the opposite is actually true. Your movement is stronger, the more different types of people are involved, and the more open your group appears to be. One of the weaknesses of activism on Guam is the impression that those who are involved in it all comes from same place, are all culled from the same social source. T

I've been a writer on the site Guamology for more than a month now and the most shocking thing about the website is that the most popular, most viewed and most loaded page there is my article " Guam and Gaza ." Looking at the page statistics, it is by a huge margin the most visited page on the entire website. I'm not at all sure why, since its not the most discussed by any means. The post itself is something you'll find plenty of on this blog. Discussions about what kind of future and present should Guam have. Should we be an island that accepts the way the United States defines and determines our lives, in particular through their strategic military interests? Should we accept and celebrate it when they call us the tip of their spear? Or should we be pushing for an existence which is more focused on ourselves and doesn't rely on the most crass and militaristic ideas of weaponizing or militarizing. As I often say to people, if you accept and celebrate Guam